By Vijay Phanshikar :
Beyond,
The essence lingers ...
Book !
- Self
VERY true !  
 

 

The essence lingers -- accompanied by certain fragrance, certain sense of belonging, certain warmth that stays on, certain sureness of comradeship. Beyond its covers and pages, well beyond the time after it has been kept aside, the book brings along all these nuanced experiences -- at times very profound, or just touch-and-go. A book is yet to be born that has not left behind the marks of its presence on the human mind. And surely, no such book will ever come about. That is the magic. Reading of book, thus, has a magical quality. It transforms you. It makes you realise who and what you are. The iconic Walt Disney famously said, “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island”.

 

And Stephen King said, “Books are a uniquely portable magic”. Each word is true. Every person approaches the book differently. Each relates to it differently. Each reacts to it differently. And so Jane Austin said, “If a book is well-written, I always find it too short”. All such comments -- and there are millions like these -- tell what the book means to people. Holding a book in hands and opening its covers means stepping into a utopia of one’s own -- where unfolds a very personalised drama to which each reader reacts differently. To begin with, the reading starts with a gusto, so to say. Then the pace steadies and a fine rhythm is achieved -- with a cadence of its own, a heaving in and heaving out of emotion with turning pages and changing scenario of the subject. In that comfort, one basks in sheer ecstacy, untold bliss that is so astoundingly impossible to capture in words.

 

Of course, this is universal as human experience. The ecstacy, the spark, the ache, the deepness of emotion, the height of elevation, the sense of liberation ... all these have a unique personal touch for every reader. All this rise and fall of emotion, the spark that the thought generates sucks one in so completely that when the book starts nearing its end, one gets internally melancholic, so to say. For, once one is through the book, it will be set aside -- for whatever time. Rarely is that parting happy. There is an invariable sense of loss, an unavoidable sense of separation. On the sensitive mind, it leaves a mark that is almost indelible.

 

So, beyond its covers and its pages, the book’s essence lingers in the mind -- for long, in some cases for eternity. True, such an enriched mind is the goal of learning. Reading of books takes one closest to that cherished goal. But then, in most cases, the pursuer of books rarely has such lofty goals in mind as he/she picks up a book to read. There is an addictive urge -- so to say -- to start reading. For, once one dives into the book’s covers and pages, one loses one’s sense of separateness or distinction. That is the reason why the book’s essence lingers beyond. In other words, in that ‘beyond’ the book actually lives.